THOMAS LARSON

Thomas Larson is the author of The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” from Pegasus Books. Saddest Music is an exploration of Barber’s Adagio, the Pietá of music, and its enigmatic composer—in celebration of the centenary of his birth. In its fall 2010 issue, The Missouri Review published the first and second chapters of Saddest Music. In 2011, this piece was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Larson is also the author of The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative, Swallow Press / Ohio University Press, 2007. In its third printing, this book is the first of its kind to evaluate the dramatic rise of the memoir in the last twenty years and to explore the craft and purpose of contemporary memoir writing. The Memoir and the Memoirist has been praised in the San Diego Union-Tribune, ForeWord Magazine, The Writer, Ploughshares, and The Bloomsbury Review.

For the last two summers, Larson has taught, given readings and craft lectures, talked on publishing in the digital age, and worked one-on-one with post-thesis students in Ashland University's MFA Program in Creative Nonfiction. He will return in 2012 to the Ashland, Ohio, program to lecture on memoir and critique students. In addition, he has been hired to teach a class in the MFA program for the Spring semester, 2012, which begins in January.

Larson has led weeklong workshops and classes in memoir writing at The Loft in Minneapolis, the Ink Spot in San Diego, the Writer's Workshoppe in Port Townsend, and the Lancaster Literary Guild, Lancaster, PA, in the last two years. His next class is a weeklong workshop at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, NM, April 16-22, 2012.

In 2011, his new critical essay on Maggie Nelson’s small masterpiece, Bluets, appeared at TriQuarterly Online. Larson also published two eBooks: What Exactly Happened: Four Essays on the Craft of Memoir, a primer on narrative style, writers’ openings, & structuring emotion in memoir as well as a personal essay, On the Poetry of James Wright. Both are available at Amazon.com

New work in 2010 includes an essay-review of David Shields’ Reality Hunger for Agni Online, a profile of crime writer Caitlin Rother in San Diego Magazine, a review of S. L. Wisenberg’s The Adventures of Cancer Bitch for Contrary, a review of Elif Batuman’s The Possessed for The Rumpus, and two feature stories for the Reader: the murder-suicide of Frank and Ginger Bass and wild boars in San Diego’s backcountry.

For twelve years, Larson has been a contributing writer for the weekly San Diego Reader where he specializes in investigative journalism, narrative nonfiction, and profiles. For the Reader Larson has written more than forty cover stories.

Among them are several true-crime murder stories and a feature on a Salvadoran immigrant who died from neglect at a San Diego federal detention center; a profile of conservative political writer, Dinesh D’Souza; the end-of-life tale of Mark Twain’s daughter, Clara Clemens; the story of Marilyn Monroe and Some Like It Hot, filmed at the Hotel Del Coronado; an article on pit bulls, sympathetic to their point-of-view; an exposé of a Mexican girl sold into sexual slavery in San Diego county; a profile of socialist author Mike Davis; articles on the molecular origin of life, the personal motivation industry, and San Diego’s 2007 subprime mortgage meltdown; and a profile of the renowned psychologist Ken Druck, whose Jenna Druck Foundation offers support for parents who have lost their children.

Larson is a regular book reviewer for Contrary Magazine online and writes reviews for other magazines and journals, among them, The Rumpus.net.

Summer 2009, New English Review published his essay, “Fiction, Fact, and Faked Memoirs,” which tells the story of four recently faked memoirs and the ensuing struggle to clarify the moral identity of memoir writing. In 2008, Larson’s memoir, “Mrs. Wright’s Bookshop,” tied for the Readers Award for the Essay, 2007 - 2008. The author’s memoir writing includes “Freshman Comp, 1967,” from the Anchor Essay Annual: The Best of 1997, edited by Phillip Lopate, Doubleday. Other personal pieces have appeared in Potomac Review, Chicago Reader, Cimarron Review, Hawaii Review, San Diego Reader, and The Cream City Review, where he won the Editor’s Award for Nonfiction.

Critical essays on memoir and autobiography have appeared in Boulevard, The San Diego Union-Tribune, AWP Chronicle, El Paso Review, and other periodicals. “Skull and Roses—Reflections on Enshrining Georgia O’Keeffe“ came out in Southwest Review, and a critical re-reading of the recently published, unexpurgated “definitive edition” of Anne Frank’s diary appeared in Antioch Review. In 2002, The Gettysburg Review published the essay, “Almost Beautiful: A Life of Nathanael West.” Amazon.com / Shorts published his “Is the Unexamined Life Worth Voting For: The Memoirs of Clinton, Edwards, and Obama“ as well as other essays and memoirs.

Larson lectures on memoir, the music of Samuel Barber, and the “social author” in the digital age throughout the United States. He is the father of two sons, Jeremy and Blake. He and his partner, Suzanna Neal, live in San Diego and, every spring, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.